Who needs Pandoc when you have Sphinx? An exploration of the parsers and builders of the Sphinx documentation tool FOSDEM

Transcription

1 Who needs Pandoc when you have Sphinx? An exploration of the parsers and builders of the Sphinx documentation tool FOSDEM

2 restructuredtext, Docutils & Sphinx 1

3 A little restructuredtext ========================= This document demonstrates some basic features of rst. You can use **bold** and *italics*, along with ``literals``. It s quite similar to `Markdown`_ but much more extensible. CommonMark may one day approach this [1]_, but today is not that day. `Docutils` does all this for us... rst replace:: **restructuredtext**.. _Markdown: [1] intro.rst

4 A little restructuredtext ========================= This document demonstrates some basic features of rst. You can use **bold** and *italics*, along with ``literals``. It s quite similar to `Markdown`_ but much more extensible. CommonMark may one day approach this [1]_, but today is not that day. `Docutils` does all this for us... rst replace:: **restructuredtext**.. _Markdown: [1] intro.rst

5 A little restructuredtext This document demonstrates some basic features of restructuredtext. You can use bold and italics, along with literals. It s quite similar to Markdown but much more extensible. CommonMark may one day approach this [1], but today is not that day. Docutils does all this for us. [1] intro.html

6 A little more restructuredtext ============================== The extensibility really comes into play with directives and roles. We can do things like link to RFCs (:RFC:`2324`, anyone?) or generate some more advanced formatting (I do love me some H\ :sub:`2`\ O)... warning:: The power can be intoxicating. Of course, all the stuff we showed previously *still works!* The only limit is your imagination/interest. more.rst

7 A little more restructuredtext ============================== The extensibility really comes into play with directives and roles. We can do things like link to RFCs (:RFC:`2324`, anyone?) or generate some more advanced formatting (I do love me some H\ :sub:`2`\ O)... warning:: The power can be intoxicating. Of course, all the stuff we showed previously *still works!* The only limit is your imagination/interest. more.rst

8 A little more restructuredtext The extensibility really comes into play with directives and roles. We can do things like link to RFCs (RFC 2324, anyone?) or generate some more advanced formatting (I do love me some H 2 O). Warning The power can be intoxicating. Of course, all the stuff we showed previously still works! The only limit is your imagination/interest. more.html

9 restructuredtext provides the syntax Docutils provides the parsing and file generation

10 restructuredtext provides the syntax Docutils provides the parsing and file generation Sphinx provides the cross-referencing

11 Docutils use readers, parsers, transforms, and writers Docutils works with individual files

12 Docutils use readers, parsers, transforms, and writers Docutils works with individual files Sphinx uses readers, parsers, transforms, writers and builders Sphinx works with multiple, cross-referenced files

13 How Does Docutils Work? 2

14 About me ======== Hello, world. I am **bold** and *maybe* I am brave. index.rst

15 $ rst2html index.rst

16 About me Hello, world. I am bold and maybe I am brave. index.html

17 index.rst index.html

18 $ rst2pseudoxml index.rst

19 <document ids="about-me" names="about\ me" source="index.rst" title="about me"> <title> About me <paragraph> Hello, world. I am <strong> bold and <emphasis> maybe I am brave. index.xml

20 $./docutils/tools/quicktest.py index.rst

21 <document source="index.rst"> <section ids="about-me" names="about\ me"> <title> About me <paragraph> Hello, world. I am <strong> bold and <emphasis> maybe I am brave. index.xml

22 Readers (reads from source and passes to the parser) Parsers (creates a doctree model from the read file) Transforms (add to, prune, or otherwise change the doctree model) Writers (converts the doctree model to a file)

23 Readers (reads from source and passes to the parser) Parsers (creates a doctree model from the read file) Transforms (add to, prune, or otherwise change the doctree model) Writers (converts the doctree model to a file)

24 What About Sphinx? 3

25 About me ======== Hello, world. I am **bold** and *maybe* I am brave. index.rst

26 master_doc = 'index' conf.py

27 $ sphinx-build -b html. _build

28 About me Hello, world. I am bold and maybe I am brave. index.html

29 Readers (reads from source and passes to the parser) Parsers (creates a doctree model from the read file) Transforms (add to, prune, or otherwise change the doctree model) Writers (converts the doctree model to a file)

30 Builders (call the readers, parsers, transformers, writers) Application (calls the builder(s)) Environment (store information for future builds)

31 Builders (call the readers, parsers, transformers, writers) Application (calls the builder(s)) Environment (store information for future builds)

32 ... updating environment: 1 added, 0 changed, 0 removed reading sources... [100%] index looking for now-outdated files... none found pickling environment... done checking consistency... done preparing documents... done generating indices... done writing additional pages... done copying static files... done copying extra files... done dumping search index in English (code: en)... done dumping object inventory... done build succeeded.

33 Docutils provides almost 100 node types document section title subtitle paragraph block_quote bullet_list note... (the root element of the document tree) (the main unit of hierarchy for documents) (stores the title of a document, section,...) (stores the subtitle of a document) (contains the text and inline elements of a single paragraph) (used for quotations set off from the main text) (contains list_item elements marked with bullets) (an admonition, a distinctive and self-contained notice)...

34 Sphinx provides its own custom node types translatable not_smartquotable toctree versionmodified seealso productionlist manpage pending_xref... (indicates content which supports translation) (indicates content which does not support smart-quotes) (node for inserting a "TOC tree") (version change entry) (custom "see also" admonition) (grammar production lists) (reference to a man page) (cross-reference that cannot be resolved yet)...

35 Docutils provides dozens of transforms DocTitle DocInfo SectNum Contents Footnotes Messages SmartQuotes Admonitions... (promote title elements to the document level) (transform initial field lists to docinfo elements) (assign numbers to the titles of document sections) (generate a table of contents from a document or sub-node) (resolve links to footnotes, citations and their references) (place system messages into the document) (replace ASCII quotation marks with typographic form) (transform specific admonitions to generic ones)...

36 Sphinx also provides additional transforms MoveModuleTargets AutoNumbering CitationReferences SphinxSmartQuotes DoctreeReadEvent ManpageLink SphinxDomains Locale... (promote initial module targets to the section title) (register IDs of tables, figures and literal blocks to assign numbers) (replace citation references with pending_xref nodes) (custom SmartQuotes to avoid transform for some extra node types) (emit doctree-read event) (find manpage section numbers and names) (collect objects to Sphinx domains for cross referencing) (replace translatable nodes with their translated doctree)...

37 Using Additional Parsers 4

38 There are a number of parsers available restructuredtext (part of docutils) Markdown (part of recommonmark) Jupyter Notebooks (part of nbsphinx)

39 # About me Hello, world. I am **bold** and *maybe* I am brave. index.md

40 $ cm2html index.md

41 About me Hello, world. I am bold and maybe I am brave. index.html

42 $ cm2pseudoxml index.md

43 <document ids="about-me" names="about\ me" source="index.md" title="about me"> <title> About me <paragraph> Hello, world. I am <strong> bold and <emphasis> maybe I am brave. index.xml

44 # About me Hello, world. I am **bold** and *maybe* I am brave. index.md

45 from recommonmark.parser import CommonMarkParser master_doc = 'index' source_parsers = {'.md': CommonMarkParser} source_suffix = '.md' conf.py

46 from recommonmark.parser import CommonMarkParser master_doc = 'index' source_parsers = {'.md': CommonMarkParser} source_suffix = '.md' conf.py

47 $ sphinx-build -b html. _build

48 About me Hello, world. I am bold and maybe I am brave. index.html

49 Using Additional Writers, Builders 5

50 Docutils provides a number of in-tree writers docutils_xml html4css1 latex2e manpage null odf_odt pep_html pseudoxml... (simple XML document tree Writer) (simple HTML document tree Writer) (LaTeX2e document tree Writer) (simple man page Writer) (a do-nothing Writer) (ODF Writer) (PEP HTML Writer) (simple internal document tree Writer)...

51 $ rst2html5 index.rst

52 from docutils.core import publish_file from docutils.writers import html5_polyglot with open('readme.rst', 'r') as source: publish_file(source=source, writer=html5_polyglot.writer())

53 $ pip install rst2txt

54 $ rst2txt index.rst

55 from docutils.core import publish_file from rst2txt with open('readme.rst', 'r') as source: publish_file(source=source, writer=rst2txt.writer())

56 Sphinx provides its own in-tree builders html qthelp epub latex text man texinfo xml... (generates output in HTML format) (like html but also generates Qt help collection support files) (like html but also generates an epub file for ebook readers) (generates output in LaTeX format) (generates text files with most rst markup removed) (generates manual pages in the groff format) (generates textinfo files for use with makeinfo) (generates Docutils-native XML files)...

57 $ sphinx-build -b html. _build

58 $ pip install sphinx-asciidoc

59 $ sphinx-build -b asciidoc. _build

60 Writing Your Own Parsers, Writers 6

61 Reading (reads from source and passes to the parser) Parsing (creates a doctree model from the read file) Transforming (applies transforms to the doctree model) Writing (converts the doctree model to a file)

62 from docutils import parsers class Parser(parsers.Parser): supported = ('null',) config_section = 'null parser' config_section_dependencies = ('parsers',) def parse(self, inputstring, document): pass docutils/parsers/null.py

63 We re not covering Compilers 101

64 We re not covering Compilers 101 We re going to cheat

65 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <document source="index.rst"> <section ids="about-me" names="about\ me"> <title>about me</title> <paragraph>hello, world. I am <strong>bold</strong> and <emphasis>maybe</emphasis> I am brave.</paragraph> </section> </document> index.xml

66 from docutils import parsers import xml.etree.elementtree as ET class Parser(parsers.Parser): supported = ('xml',) config_section = 'XML parser' config_section_dependencies = ('parsers',) def parse(self, inputstring, document): xml = ET.fromstring(inputstring) self._parse(document, xml)... xml_parser.py

67 ... def _parse(self, node, xml): for attrib, value in xml.attrib.items(): # NOTE(stephenfin): this isn't complete! setattr(node, attrib, value) for child in xml: child_node = getattr(nodes, child.tag)(text=child.text) node += self._parse(child_node, child) if xml.tail: return node, nodes.text(xml.tail) return node xml_parser.py

68 Reading (reads from source and passes to the parser) Parsing (creates a doctree model from the read file) Transforming (applies transforms to the doctree model) Writing (converts the doctree model to a file)

69 from docutils import writers class Writer(writers.Writer): supported = ('pprint', 'pformat', 'pseudoxml') config_section = 'pseudoxml writer' config_section_dependencies = ('writers',) output = None def translate(self): self.output = self.document.pformat() docutils/writers/pseudoxml.py

70 from docutils import writers class Writer(writers.Writer): supported = ('pprint', 'pformat', 'pseudoxml') config_section = 'pseudoxml writer' config_section_dependencies = ('writers',) output = None def translate(self): self.output = self.document.pformat() docutils/writers/pseudoxml.py

71 from docutils import nodes, writers class TextWriter(writers.Writer): supported = ('text',) config_section = 'text writer' config_section_dependencies = ('writers',) output = None def translate(self): visitor = TextTranslator(self.document) self.document.walkabout(visitor) self.output = visitor.body rst2txt/writer.py

72 from docutils import nodes, writers class TextWriter(writers.Writer): supported = ('text',) config_section = 'text writer' config_section_dependencies = ('writers',) output = None def translate(self): visitor = TextTranslator(self.document) self.document.walkabout(visitor) self.output = visitor.body rst2txt/writer.py

73 ... class TextTranslator(nodes.NodeVisitor):... def visit_document(self, node): pass def depart_document(self, node): pass def visit_section(self, node): pass rst2txt/writer.py

74 from sphinx.builders import Builder class TextBuilder(Builder): name = 'text' def init (self): pass def get_outdated_docs(self): pass def get_target_uri(self): pass sphinx/builders/text.py

75 ... def prepare_writing(self, docnames): pass def write_doc(self, docnames, doctree): pass def finish(self): pass sphinx/builders/text.py

76 Wrap Up 6

77 Sphinx and Docutils share most of the same architecture Readers Parsers Transforms Writers

78 but Sphinx builds upon and extends Docutils core functionality Builders Application Environment

79 There are multiple writers/builders provided by both HTML Manpage LaTeX XML texinfo (Sphinx only) ODF (Docutils only)...

80 ...and many more writers/builders available along with readers Markdown (reader and builder) Text (writer) ODF (builder) AsciiDoc (builder) EPUB2 (builder) restructuredtext (builder)...

81 It s possible to write your own

82 It s possible to write your own

83 Fin

84 Who needs Pandoc when you have Sphinx? An exploration of the parsers and builders of the Sphinx documentation tool FOSDEM

85 Useful Packages and Tools recommonmark (provides a Markdown reader) sphinx-markdown-builder (provides a Markdown builder) sphinx-asciidoc (provides an AsciiDoc builder) rst2txt (provides a plain text writer) asciidoclive.com (online AsciiDoc Editor) rst.ninjs.org (online rst Editor)

86 References Quick restructuredtext Docutils Reference Guide restructuredtext Markup Specification restructuredtext Directives restructuredtext Interpreted Text Roles Docutils Hacker s Guide PEP-258: Docutils Design Specification

87 References A brief tutorial on parsing restructuredtext (rest) -- Eli Bendersky A lion, a head, and a dash of YAML -- Stephen Finucane ( ) OpenStack + Sphinx In A Tree -- Stephen Finucane ( ) Read the Docs & Sphinx now support Commonmark -- Read the Docs Blog